Here, with great fanfare, is the second installment of Engineer Guy Series #4: theMEMSaccelerometer. With typical flair, Bill and his production team take us from the basic concept of an accelerometer (using the familiar ball-on-a-spring model), through the analogous silicon device that lets your smartphone tell up from down, all the way to the anisotropic etching techniques used to It’s wonders all the way down, with Bill, as usual.
Bill Hammack is back! I am pleased beyond measure to present the first video in Engineer Guy Series #4, in which Bill Hammack and his Engineer Guy production team at the University of Illinois unravel the key technology of digital photography: the charge-coupled device.
In this, the last installment of the third series of Bill Hammack’s wildly popular Engineer Guy videos, Bill exposes the wonders of fiber optics. He starts by demonstrating transmission of laser light through a fiber optic stereo cable, then explains total internal reflection with a really cool visual aid made from a bucket of antifreeze. There are details on the manufacture of the fibers themselves, the design of the first transatlantic fiber optic cable, and the signal processing used to encode data for transmission via fiber. All that, and more, in just five minutes and thirty seconds. Nice way to wound out series #3, Bill!
Bill Hammack’s video this week explains the constraints that govern the engineering of cell phones, and how and why the development of key technologies has changed the way cell phones look and function. He also shows off the 8pen gestural keyboard app installed on his Android, which I immediately had to download and try for myself. Thanks, Bill, as always!
Bill’s back! And his subject this week may be the ultimate example of a truly astounding piece of engineering that we all tend to take for granted: The computer hard drive. A favorite college physics professor once admitted to me that the hard disk drive impressed him more than almost any other single piece of modern technology, and I have since found that, the more I think about it, the more I agree with him. As always, Bill Hammack does a great job of explaining things in a way that will appeal to both experts and amateurs.
For a few years now, I’ve had this hare-brained idea to try to separate the layers of polarizing film from a scrap LCD panel and make a polariscope out of them. So whenever I come across a dead one I tear it apart and do some experimenting. Probably been into half a dozen by now. But I’ve probably learned as much, or more, about how they actually work by watching Bill Hammack’s video this week. As always, this segment has something to offer novices, experts, and those, like myself, who know just enough to be dangerous. [Thanks, Bill!]
Most of our readers will know that one of the most common types of residential smoke detectors actually contains radioactive material—specifically, an isotope of americium—which is used to ionize air molecules in the detector itself. In this video, the always-engaging Bill Hammack, aka Engineer Guy, explains both the operation of the ionizing detector and, most interestingly for me, also the circuit in which it operates, and the MOSFET which is the other critical component in that circuit (and is, incidentally, the namesake of Phil Torrone’s cat). Characteristic Bill quote: “To me, this is engineering at its best: Simple, reliable, and inexpensive. And saving countless lives.” Thanks, Bill, as always!
